Really Discoverer of 4G LTE Technology Indonesia?

Had a rumor that the inventor of the latest generation of mobile technology, 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE), none other than an Indonesian named Khoirul Anwar.
Doctorate, Khioirul is known as one of the successful diaspora developing communication technology at a university in Japan.

But is it true that the news that he is the inventor of 4G LTE?

Two Indonesian representatives at the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the international body that sets the standardization of communications technology, have the opposite view.

Through a written statement to KompasTekno, the two persons referred to, Dr. Basuki Priyanto, Master Researcher at Sony Mobile Communications AB and Dr. Eko Onggosanusi, Research Director of Samsung Research America, explained that the 4G LTE standard is actually created and formulated together by the members of 3GPP.

Long trip 4G LTE

Members of 3GPP include virtually all industry players, including vendors such as Ericsson, Huawei, Samsung, Nokia, and Sony, as well as operators such as NTT Docomo, Vodafone and AT & T.

The establishment of the LTE 4G standard requires a long process, starting from the feasibility study phase in 2005 before proceeding to the formulation phase.

In the process, 3GPP members propose their own ideas and proposals and discuss them together to discuss issues such as complexity and performance.

Generally, the proposed idea or proposal is already protected in patent form before it is thrown into the forum. The final form of each feature that is decided together is the hasl of the combined (synthesis) of several competitively recognized proposals.

“It is rare that a single proposal from one company is adopted without modification (as is). This decision is taken through a consensus process, “writes Basuki and Eko in his statement.

Finally, when the standard of the document (specification) has been approved and inaugurated, then all telecom vendors will adapt its products to that standard. This is what enables 4G LTE products to be standard and can be used all over the world.

Who is the inventor?

As a standardization body, 3GPP only contains essential components in the specification, for example OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, modulation method for base-station connection to handset) 4G LTE is formulated as the sum of sinusoids with different frequencies.

The combination of OFDM with the FFT (Fast Fourier Modulation) technique delivers a more efficient Single Carrier-Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) in terms of transmitting signals from the handset to the base station.

Khoirul Anwar is the inventor and patent holder of transmitter technology using the two FFT concept, to be used on the SC-FDMA method, in the 4G LTE uplink process.

However, LTE specifications do not require vendors to use FFT schemes or certain FFT schemes, because FFT can be implemented in various ways. One of its aims is to give vendors a competitive freedom to use their own proprietary schemes in their products.

“So, an inventor of an FFT scheme different from before could not claim that its invention has been or will be used for LTE,” continued Basuki and Eko.

Khoirul found a technique from many other techniques that can be used to implement one (among several) components of OFDM described in the LTE specification.

The “4G LTE Technology” is the synthesis of the specifications formulated jointly by the industry players in the 3GPP forum. Inside there are thousands of important components that are interrelated.

Thus, according to Eko and Basuki, it can be said that it is impossible for a person or even an institution to claim to be the inventor of 4G LTE.

In a post that was uploaded on December 24, 2014 in his personal blog, Khoirul himself has been denied the title of “the inventor of 4G LTE” which is attached to him by a number of parties.

“In the book PABXII (Achmad Bakrie Award) I did not write as the inventor of 4G LTE because 4G LTE itself should not be found, but agreed. Forms that agree on certain techniques to be used or not used in a standard, “Khoirul said.